4 Levels of Fettuccine Alfredo: Amateur to Food Scientist

[light music]

I'm Stephen, and I'm a level one chef.

I'm Julie and I'm a level two chef.

I'm Frank, I've been a professional chef for 23 years.

My girlfriend wanted to go out to more Italian restaurants

and they were charging us 23 dollars for fettuccine alfredo

and I was like absolutely not,

I'll go and make my own fettuccine at home

and now I have a happy relationship.

I make pasta a couple of times a week,

it reminds me of the summer

that I spent in Cortina D'ampezzo.

I really like Fettuccine Alfredo,

it doesn't take a lot of ingredients

and everyone loves it!

[light music]

I'm gonna make pasta dough.

I'm gonna start with some double zero flour,

this is the grandma style pasta making.

No mixer required.

And then I'm gonna do three egg yolks.

Keep mixing it until it's not really wet anymore,

and I'm gonna slowly gather in the flour from the sides.

I want this pasta to be fairly dry

because if it's really wet it's hard to handle

when you roll it out.

If we roll it out at this point, it's gonna snap back,

'cause the proteins are so tense right now.

I'm gonna wrap it so it doesn't get a dry skin on it.

If the pasta gets a skin on it,

it's gonna be really hard to roll out.

And that's it, that's how grandma would do it.

Nice, smooth, firm dough.

It's pasta, it's not rocket science, just do it.

I got my store bought fettuccine,

cost me 99 cents.

I like to use fresh pasta because it has a really

nice consistency and soaks up the sauce.

Now that the water is boiling,

like my blood once people criticize my fettuccine,

place the store-bought fettuccine in,

we're gonna add some salt, not too much.

Now we're gonna heavily salt this.

Don't add too much salt in the beginning

because it just throws off the whole dynamic

and then you just have really really salty pasta,

then you're gonna find yourself at Olive Garden

spending 15 dollars, 20 dollars on pasta

when you could've just had it for five.

I have a nice old granny machine here,

I start it out at the lowest setting

and now what we're gonna do is go down the numbers,

you don't wanna rush this because if you jump through

the numbers and you jump through the thicknesses,

your pasta will kinda start to tear.

Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna shave some fresh

summer truffles, black, summer truffle.

Gonna have a mandolin,

this is extremely dangerous,

I don't want these shavings of truffle to be super super

paper thin and lamented

and then we're gonna have a nice kind of sandwich

of the truffles and the pasta.

And I cut it in half 'cause that's kind of the length

of the fettuccine that I want for this.

Stack them and roll them.

Fettuccine, some people think it's really thick,

some people thing it's really thin,

I'm just going with what I think is

close to what fettuccine is, okay?

Couple of things, I like dry pasta

but fresh pasta soaks in some sauces.

Fresh pasta only takes two to three minutes to cook.

The key to a good pasta,

you want the water to be moving to move that pasta around

a lot of boiling water, more than you need.

Don't use a lot of water,

because we're not using cream,

we want the water to be really starchy

because that'll help bind the sauce together.

Doesn't go to 11?

I don't know the scientific facts behind this,

this is what I learned from my Nana in northern Italy.

A wooden spoon, doesn't let the pasta stick together.

You wanna let it sit in the water

until it's a little bit hard.

Only cook it three quarters of the way.

[Julie] Just a touch under cooked.

Try to get as much as you can out of the water

without burning your face.

No fettuccine left behind!

I don't mind some of that pasta water on there,

this is something that everyone throws away.

We're gonna use this as our sauce base.

So now we're gonna prepare the vegetables

so that it can be prepared for the fettuccine later.

Add a little bit of garlic, broccoli, then our mushrooms

so it can look pretty, like myself.

Nobody wants salt-less vegetables, paprika, black pepper,

think I've put too much pepper,

it's like in my [coughs].

This looks like a lot now

but if you've cooked with spinach in the past

you know that this will go down very very quickly.

Vuala, boom!

Originally fettuccine alfredo is pasta al puro

which is pasta with butter, so surprise.

A whole wheel of cheese.

This is grana padano, a close cousin of parmeasan.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add some of that pasta water

that we saved, that nice starchy

pasta water Pasta water

We're gonna add the heavy cream.

Now, I told you no cream,

but I didn't say anything about butter.

We're usin' a lot of butter.

I use cultured butter, has a little funk to it.

Place it into the pan.

Rather than dump a whole stick of butter in,

we're gonna cut it in so that we can make our sauce

creamy and emulsify it, I have two secret weapons,

this ones not so secret 'cause it's cheese!

And I like it grated finely because it's easier

to make a nice creamy sauce.

So, instead of grading the cheese,

you're just scraping the cheese that

you feel you're gonna need.

I'm from the Caribbean,

we like to use nutmeg in a lot of different things.

This nutmeg comes from a tree, outside my aunts house

in Mandibal, Jamaica!

I get them smuggled in.

And I like to use this little microplane,

look at that beautiful brown nutmeg.

Bubble and melt those flavors together.

Mmm, just about right.

You can see that my pasta is boiling now.

I'm gonna dump it right into my cheese

and give it a good stir,

you can see it right away, what happens?

I start to get a beautiful, creamy sauce.

This is what I'm talkin' about,

coming to calm as my mother used to say!

We're gonna put our pasta in, toss, plate, and dress!

We have reached our final stage

where we will incorporate everything into one pan

and it will be ready for us to plate.

Oh, I brought a bottle of sauce from the store,

just in case I messed it up.

Okay.

Anybody who tells you not to use your hands

when you're cooking, you gotta get your hands in the food

man, come on!

You wanna have a good balance between pasta and sauce.

I wanna say pasta 40 five!

I would say sauce 55, that equals 100?

That sounds right.

I wish you could smell this at home.

Creepin' on level two territory right now.

The old spoon in the pot trick

seems to have worked.

And now, we're ready to plate!

I like to put the parmeasan at the bottom

because later on, I'll mix the pasta with the parmeasan,

nothing gets left behind.

I have this beautiful creamy sauce, without any cream!

It's just butter, pasta water and cheese.

Now, couple of things you're gonna do.

A little bit more of the Jamaican secret weapon!

Nutmeg!

A nice helping of truffles,

the thinner the better on these,

don't want them to be too thick.

I love parmeasan, every time I go to the restaurant

I give the person like carpal tunnel,

they're like say when, I never say when!

Fresh cracked pepper Fresh cracked black pepper

always, that stuff that sits on the shelf

that's ground up already is dead,

this is kinda still alive.

It has a nice kinda sharpness to it.

I like a little bit of parsley

to make the plate look nice.

And here is my Fettuccine Alfredo.

Vuala!

Fettuccine Alfredo!

You wanna serve it right away.

Once the warmth hits the truffles,

they're gonna give off this beautiful truffle aroma.

[light music]

This looks so good, I almost don't wanna try it.

All right, here we go.

That's really good!

Delicious. Good job!

Shouldn't talk with my mouth full,

this is very tasty.

Any time I get a request to go out

I will cook this and you can add as much parmeasan

without the judgment of a restaurant.

I think I hit it out of the park,

this is a great recipe for a dinner party.

Everybody loves cheese, it looks pretty

and because you saw how easy it was,

you got a dinner party, man!

Fettuccine Alfredo the way it's meant to be.

I would serve Fettuccine Alfredo

during the holidays, it's kind of the labor of love

and especially if you can put truffles on it.

You gotta really like these people, okay!

Go away, I'm gonna eat now.

We saw three different chefs combine three different

sauces and pastas to make their own Fettuccine Alfredo.

[light music]

Stephen used store-bought dried pasta,

Julie used store-bought fresh pasta

and Frank crafted homemade pasta.

Store-bought dried pasta contains only two ingredients,

flour and water.

Julie's store-bought fresh pasta and Frank's homemade

pasta are both similar to dried pasta,

but also contain eggs.

Pasta is composed of a network of proteins holding

together starch molecules.

The two essential chemical compounds in pasta,

carbohydrates and proteins, vary in their ratio

in fresh and dry pasta.

Stephen's pasta has considerably more starch

than Julie and Frank's pasta.

His requires a longer cooking time to completely hydrate

the starch molecules.

Keep it separated because pasta, like good friends,

likes to stick together.

The eggs in Julie and Frank's fresh pasta

increases overall protein content, requiring a shorter

cook time to completely hydrate the starch molecules

and cook the fettuccine.

[light music]

Alfredo sauce is distinguishable by it's velvety

and creamy mouth feel and overall richness.

The creaminess can be accomplished by including

milk fat or starches.

The sauce is an emulsion.

The combination of typically unmixable liquids

into one homogeneous sauce.

Stephen made an American-style alfredo sauce

by combining heavy cream, butter and cheese

to form a silky mixture.

Julie and Frank made an Italian-style alfredo sauce

by emulsifying butter with pasta water

and adding cheese to create a thickened sauce.

This pasta water, this is key to this sauce.

The butter and cream in Stephen's sauce

both contain a high quantity of milk fat.

The flavor compounds locked into the milk fat

particularly lactones and sulfurous compounds

will provide a deep buttery flavor to Stephen's sauce.

Milk fat also contains phospholipids.

Phospholipids are amphiphilic,

both water loving and fat loving

and will help keep Stephen's sauce completely emulsified

to account for the less milk fat,

Julie and Frank used starchy pasta water

to help thicken the alfredo sauce.

Julie made her sauce by heating pasta water in a pan

and slowly whisking in butter to emulsify or bring together

the water and butter mixture into one homogenous mixture.

Mmm!

Kinda good!

Frank combined hot pasta water and melted butter

to create an emulsified sauce.

He then tossed the pasta and added the saucy fettuccine

mixture into a carved out wheel of grana padano.

The starch molecules in the pasta water will

swell and thicken Frank and Julie's sauce creating

a richness without the addition of cream.

They also included butter which dispersed throughout

the pasta water, creating an even texture and smooth sauce.

And it doesn't work well unless

you get it all over yourself.

Okay, you gotta get it everywhere.

[light music]

All of our chefs tossed their pasta in the sauce

before plating the dish.

The residual starches on the outside

of the cooked pasta will allow the sauce to cling

to the outside and thoroughly coat the fettuccine.

Each chef crafted a distinct flavor profile

for their sauce, Stephen added parmeasan and garlic

and mixed in mushroom, spinach, and broccoli.

The garlic is like creepin' into my nose,

but it's a good creep.

The dry, store-bough pasta will hold its own

against the heaviness and rich flavor in the sauce.

Parsley for garnish provides an earthy flavor

and classic appearance to the dish.

Julie used only a few ingredients to flavor her sauce.

Parmesan, nutmeg, and parsley.

The combination of parmeasan and nutmeg will provide

a subtle nutty flavor, perfectlt suited for

the tender, fresh pasta.

Frank used cultured butter, truffles, pepper

and grana padano cheese to deepen the flavor

of his alfredo sauce.

He tossed the pasta inside a wheel of grana padano cheese

before plating, the hot pasta melted the walls

of the cheese wheel, heightening the cheesy flavor

and texture in Frank's dish.

Cultured butter has been made with bacterial cultures.

The bacteria converts some of the sugars

into lactic acid which produces diacetyl,

a butter flavor compound and butyric acid,

a tangy flavored fatty acid.

Paired with salty grano padano cheese,

and woody truffles, Frank's dish has

a distinct flavor profile.

Using that cultured butter 'cause of that little

sharpness is delicious.

Every day beats the creamy sauce.

Toss some of these tips into your next pasta night

for a rich and delicious fettuccine alfredo.